South Carolina 2012: Romney, Gingrich, Santorum...or Colbert? Who Will Football Fans Vote for?

Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert can't get on the South Carolina ballot, but that's not what his budding presidential bid is about. Photo: Reuters

Two South Carolina football fans watching the NFL playoffs this weekend are subjected to a barrage of political advertising. Here, then, a conversation between them during the halftime of Giants vs. Packers game on Sunday:

Fan 1: Wow, here we are trying to watch a game and every two seconds there's another political ad.

Fan 2: If We get another one, I'm gonna lose my mind. I mean who cares? It's Romney, right?

Fan 1: Santorum, Gingrich, Romney, depends.

Fan 2: Shut. The game is on.

Fan 1: Shut yourself. Another commercial.

Fan 2: At least it's for beer.

Fan 1: Musta been a mistake at the station. I hear the Super PAC ads are going for double the ones they are bumping.

Fan 2: Think evangelicals matter so much now, what with the Tea Party?

Fan 1: We're 60 percent evangelical here.

Fan 2: But those ads from Romney...The anti-Gingrich ones? Here's one now:

Fan 2: And then a pro-Gingrich Super Pac released a giant 27-minute video about Romney and all that all that corporate-raider Bain stuff. I checked it out online the other day and it looks bad:

We lost a lot of companies down here with those types of guys. And he's corporate raider, at least according to the Super PAC supporting Gingrich...

Fan 1: But now Gingrich sent them a letter saying to change that in the ads. But he also told Romney to pull his ads that were taking shots, because they were inaccurate, too.

Fan 2: So are any of the ads accurate?

Fan 1: Well, you know what they say: Where there's smoke there's fire. And Santorum seems to think they are both right -- about each other. He says Romney is like everybody's boss, and who is gonna vote for his boss, right? And Gingrich, well he has those ethical issues, and, of course, he crashed and burned as speaker last time out.

Fan 2: So Santorum is the conservative's conservative, then?

Fan 1: That's what he says. But he collected all that money as a lobbyist after he left the Senate and was a major pork-barrel supporter -- plus he voted to increase the debt-limit. So that's a problem. But he's a real social conservative, at least, not like the other two. Of course, he only has 16 percent of the primary vote here, and odds are, he can't really beat Obama.

Fan 2: So it's Romney, except for Bain, Gingrich, except for his adultery and ethical issues, or Santorum, who is a die-hard social conservative, but who did a lot of pork-barrel deals, signed off on big-government debt-limit increases and, when he left government, took a bunch of lobbying money?

Fan 1: That's what I've heard, for days now, all over the TV. So many different people are saying these things about all of them, you kind of figure at least some of it is true. Not one of them sound all that appealing, now that I think of it.

Fan 1: I heard they all spent over $11 million on these ads to make sure that we got the straight dope. I suppose we should be grateful. How else would we have found out what a bunch of lousy candidates they all are?

Fan 2: I just wish they hadn't ruined the NFL Playoffs for us, with all these depressing ads. So now who do we vote for?

Fan 1: Hey, what about this guy? He's a South Carolina conservative, who is thinking of running. Haven't heard anything bad about him, either. He's probably no worse than the rest. Seems his name is Stephen Colbert.

Fan 2: Maybe we should vote for him. Here's his Super PAC ad coming up on TV now: